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Saturday, November 27, 2010

Preview Review: Red Harvest by Joe Schreiber: Chapter 4 *SPOILERS*

Warning: The following contains spoilers for the forthcoming novel, Red Harvest.

In what hearkens back to old serial novels,Starwars.com continues to release Joe Schreiber's novel Red Harvestchapter by chapter. This is a very curious move. If the novel is complete enough to release this much of it so far, why not push up the publishing date to before Christmas and attempt to get a bump in sales?

Is it part of some test balloon of viral marketing? Get a cult following for a novel before its released and see how it effects sales? I'm not really sure what Del Ray/Lucasbooks is thinking with their approach to this novel, but what I do know is that so far so good. This book looks awesome.

So far we have gotten a close up view of Sith Training, Sith Alchemy, and Sith Bullying. But the latest chapter is like something out of Thomas Harris' Hannibal Lecter novels.

Knights of the Old Republic fans will be excited over the inclusion of the HK Droid. Statement: Stupid Sith Meatsacks.

Chapter Excerpt #1:

“Statement: It’s through here, sir,” the HK said, gesturing up at the
tower. “Right this way.”
Dranok paused in his tracks and looked up. He’d seen some weird
architecture in his time, but the Sith Lord’s tower was unsettling in a
different way. It was imposing, yes, and much taller than it had looked
from the air, but there was another quality to it, an indefinable sense of
wrongness, as if it had been built at some unnatural angle so that it
seemed to curl down on top of him like an immense black claw. He’d
once overheard talk in some spaceport about the Sith, how they’d
learned to manipulate spatial geometry itself, creating buildings that
were, in themselves, detached from physical reality. The guy telling the
story had claimed you could get lost inside a Sith labyrinth and never
escape. Dranok had dismissed it as a lot of drunken superstition, but
looking at the tower now, he wasn’t sure. He didn’t like standing in
front of it, and liked even less the idea of going inside.

Not only does Schreiber make the Sith creepy, he makes their architecture creepy.

We also get a nice description of Lord Scabrous: Chapter Excerpt #2

The bounty hunter froze at the sound of his own name, the voice
turning his breath to dry ice in his lungs. Up ahead, standing between
him and the exit, a tall, dark- cloaked figure gazed back at him from the
other side of a long stone table. Dranok realized that he was looking into
the face of a man with long, refined features, the aquiline nose, raked
brow, and prominent cheekbones stretched out until they were almost
a caricature of arrogance. Thick gray hair, a strange silvery blue color,
swept back away from his forehead. The figure extended one longfingered
hand, gesturing him forward, and at the same moment Dranok
saw the man’s eyes flicker and pulse as if reflecting the burst of
some far- off explosion.

We also found out that the particular black orchid that Lord Scabrous is after has a name, its Murakami Orchid.

We also get some confirmation that Lord Scabrous has probably been training Rance Lussk, because he uses the same Dark Side technique that Lussk used on his fellow student Wim Nickter.

Chapter Excerpt #3:

He stared at what lay underneath, sudden horror piling up inside
his throat like a clogged siphon. It took less than a second to realize
that the shaggy thing in front of him was the severed, stewed head of
his partner, Skarl. The Nelvaanian’s mouth had been pried open wide
enough to accommodate the ripe red jaquira fruit that had been thrust
between its jaws. Dead, boiled eyes gaped up at him with what almost
looked like accusation....

“Every traitor makes a meal of his allies.” Scabrous held up a knife
and fork in front of the bounty hunter’s face. “This is your last meal,
Dranok, and you must eat it, every morsel. That is the offer I present
to you. If you can do that, I will allow you to walk out of here alive.”
Dranok recoiled, struggling harder to pull himself free. But the only
part of his body that he could move was his right hand, the one that
Scabrous was allowing him to lift in the direction of the dining uten-
Star Wars: Red Harvest 29
sils. Jaw clenched, he grasped the knife from the Sith Lord’s hand—
and then thrust it forward, as hard as he could.

The chapter preview also ends on a cliffhanger and what appears to be the first appearance of our zombie friends....

Read Chapter Previews 1-4 below and get hooked on some Sith Zombies...

In many ways the penultimate book in a large series is the most difficult to write. The author must begin the process of weaving th...

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